Dyke

Dyke, or DIKE, an artificial mound along the bank of a river or seashore, erected for the purpose of preventing inundation; but dyke is also used in the sense of ditch, another form of the same word. Dykes or embankments, in some form or another, are in use in most low-lying countries, as in the English Fen Country and along the Lower Mississippi (q.v.). But the classical land of dykes is Holland, where as early as 10 B.C. the Roman commander Drusus made embankments. Besides the river-dykes, and those which help to keep the polders (see POLDER) drained, the kingdom of the Netherlands possesses, where the shores are not defended by sand-dunes, no less than 1550 miles of sea-dykes, erected and maintained at enormous cost. One, the West-Kappel dyke, is 12,648 feet long, and 23 feet high, with a seaward slope of 300 feet; it is protected by piles and stone-work, and has a road and a railway on its top. Great destruction has been brought about by the bursting of dykes in Holland; sometimes the Dutch dykes have been deliberately broken down for military purposes, as when in 1574 the Prince of Orange raised the siege of Leyden by breaking down the dykes, flooding the country, and drowning many of the besieging Spaniards. Recent illustrations of the fearful damage caused by the bursting of dykes are those which destroyed Szegedin, in Hungary, in 1879, and the flooding of a vast area in China by the inundation of the Hoang-ho in 1887. For various kinds of embankments, see CANAL, RAILWAY, LEVÉE, WATER-WORKS, HAARLEM, BEDFORD LEVEL.